Quantities to be confirmed

Uitenhage (SA) – After years of knocking at BMW’s door, Mario Levi Manufacturing SA (Pty) Ltd has been accredited as a leather supplier, and will start full production for BMW at the beginning of July.

“We’ve received full accreditation for all colours,” said GM William Seal. “To begin with, we’ve been allocated 2 colours – oyster and coral red – for a new model, the L07.

“We don’t know the quantities yet, but it looks as if we’ll be making leather for 120 to 130 cars a day.”

Mario Levi will supply the leather to Lear Rosslyn and ALC, both in Pretoria.

The company is BMW’s fourth leather supplier in South Africa.

“This plant was set up to make automotive leather,” he said, “and we supplied Fiat in Italy and Holden in Australia in the past. Currently, we supply leather to General Motors for the P190 Isuzu bakkie, and we’re GM South Africa’s only leather supplier, but it’s relatively small.

“This is a very versatile plant. We also supply leather for the automotive aftermarket, and for furniture. Furniture is the biggest part of our production now, but we would like to change that to 70% automotive, 30% furniture. We would not want to drop furniture leather, however. It’s very good for filling a factory, and not all the hides we get are automotive grade.”

He said Mario Levi had also experimented with making footwear upper leather, “but our plant is geared up for whole hides, not sides, and we couldn’t produce footwear leather economically.” – [Tel: +27 (0)41 995 6703, email: William@mariolevi.co.za]